We’re almost at the end of February, but I’ve still been hashing out the details of my personal and professional goals for 2019. I wanted to have this done by January 1, but the end of the year is always a crazy time for me, and I wanted to make sure I could set aside enough time to really think through my goals.

I’ve been really fascinated by goals lately, and by productivity science in general. I’ve been reading a lot of Laura Vanderkam, Gretchen Rubin, Charles Duhigg, Chris Bailey, and others who have explored different ideas around making the most of your time. And by extension, making the most of your life (This partly explains my delay; there’s so much to read!).

I did get a bit intimidated by all of the research and advice from these books; there’s a lot to consider, and I don’t want to waste time working towards a goal that won’t ultimately get me where I want to be, or give me the life I want to have. But one of the pieces of advice I kept coming across was that you can only think about something for so long before you just have to do something about it. So I decided to dive right into the goal-setting process, and here we are!

Here are my personal and professional goals for 2019:

This looks like a lot to accomplish at first glance, but I’m confident that if I employ the productivity strategies I’ve been learning from my reading, I can easily make a dent in this list. These are the main strategies I plan to use:

• Tracking my progress daily in my bullet journal, and reflecting at the end of each week and each month
• Timeboxing (or time blocking) my calendar to schedule time for specific tasks
• Employing accountability partners (my husband and my colleagues)

Of course, life happens and plans change, so these goals will probably evolve as the year goes on. Even so, I’m glad that I now have something concrete to work towards!